Are you interested in teaching with our daily writing prompts? In this guide, you’ll learn practical strategies from a dozen teachers, and we’ll walk you through the steps on how you can get started.
Is your school’s dress code outdated?
What objects bring you comfort?
Should athletes speak out on social and political issues?
Every school day we post a new question that invites students to read an article from The New York Times and respond with their own ideas and opinions. Teachers tell us our Student Opinion questions are a good opportunity to bring current events into the classroom and allow students to practice writing for an authentic audience.
Michael Kellen, an English teacher from Apopka, Fla., says:
The Student Opinion feature allows my students to consider an issue from multiple sides, using the reporting of The New York Times. On a daily basis, my students can discover how they feel about a variety of topics and practice the opinion-based writing that is a core component of the curriculum.
Some of our questions ask students to make an argument, while others invite personal writing. They range in topics from social media and sports to gun violence and gender roles. Over the years, we have published thousands of questions.
In this teacher’s guide, we will walk you through how and why a variety of teachers across subjects and grade levels use our Student Opinion questions with their students, and we’ll help you get started using these prompts in your own classroom. We encourage you to use this guide in a way that best fits your learning needs: As a solo self-guided training, going through section by section; with a professional learning community or small group of colleagues learning together; or as a reference guide, pulling ideas as you need them.
In this guide:
Warm-Up
The best way to get to know our Student Opinion questions is to try one yourself. In March, we asked students the question, “What do you think are the secrets to happiness?” Now, we want to hear your thoughts on this topic.
Click on the link below to read through this Student Opinion question. Read the related article and write down your answers to the discussion questions provided. If you’d like to share your answers, do so in the comments section of this post. The comments section of the Student Opinion feature is a space for students to share their thoughts.
Get to Know the Feature
Now that you’ve gotten a taste, let’s get to know the feature and start to think about how you may be able to integrate it into your curriculum. In the video below, Nicole Daniels, a staff editor at The Learning Network, will walk you through our Student Opinion feature.
Some questions to reflect on after watching the video:
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How do you see Student Opinion questions benefiting your students?
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How might you use this feature in your curriculum?
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In what ways do you currently bring student voice and opinion into your classroom?
Feel free to share your reflections in the comments section of this post.
In the Classroom
Writing prompts from The Learning Network can be used as a teaching tool at school or from home. Teachers often let students choose the prompts they want to respond to based on the topics they find most interesting. Other times they assign a specific prompt that ties into their curriculums. Many teachers use our prompts as a standing homework assignment every night or each week. Other teachers use the prompts as a class activity to complete together.
Classroom Case Study
Let’s take a look at how one teacher uses Student Opinion questions in her A.P. Language and Composition class. In this video, you will meet Tina Shah, an English teacher at Glenbard West High School in Glen Ellyn, Ill., along with four of her students.
Some questions to reflect on after watching the video:
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What stood out to you? Why?
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What questions do you have?
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What are the three priorities that Ms. Shah identifies? Do you share any of these priorities in your teaching?
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In the middle of the video, Ms. Shah and her students talk about various “writing moves” that they practice with Student Opinion questions. Which of these writing moves do you want your students to practice?
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At the end of the video, Ms. Shah and her students talk about engaging in authentic conversations. In what ways do you have your students build conversational skills, as well as develop and deliver their opinions?
Feel free to share your reflections in the comments section of this post.
Examples From Other Teachers
Ms. Shah’s approach is just one of many ways that we see teachers using Student Opinion questions in the classroom. Here are some additional examples of ways teachers have used this feature across different grade levels and subject areas:
I use this every week, with every class. Students respond first to me via Google Docs, then after spell check they copy and paste their response into the comments. My students are extremely eager every week to see if anyone was published in the What Students Are Saying About feature. The Student Opinion response has literally become part of the fabric or culture in my class. — Donna Cubbage, middle school English teacher
I use it every Friday. I create a Nearpod lesson with collaboration boards, polls and embed videos, and use the draw-it feature for guided reading before the students write their opinions. — Debbie Domingues-Murphy, high school librarian
Students love using this as a warm-up, then having a Philosophical Chairs style debate. They have also used these topics as a starting place for further research. — Tiffany Mathes, high school English teacher
I like to use it when I want students to really think about their “position” before launching into a unit. A great way to work current events into my lessons and get students to see connections with literature from “long ago” and issues that are relevant today. — Amy Chappuis, high school E.L.L. teacher
Carla Cefalo, a health teacher, explains in this post how she uses our prompts — on topics like relationship building, mental health, self-care, bullying and social media — to discuss a range of social-emotional issues and engage students in discussions around healthy choices.
And Steve Weisblatt, a community college instructor, explains in this post how he uses our Student Opinion questions as prompts for English-language learners to practice writing and critical thinking skills in preparation for the college’s English-proficiency test.
Try It Out in Your Classroom
So far, you’ve tried out a Student Opinion prompt yourself, learned more about the feature and explored ways that teachers have used it in their classrooms. Now we encourage you to try this out in your own classroom.
Step 1: Explore the Prompts.
Take some time to look through our most recent prompts in the Student Opinion column, as well as our curated lists of 1,000 writing prompts, 300 argumentative writing prompts and 550 prompts for personal and narrative writing, all organized by topic.
Step 2: Select Questions for Your Students.
Select a few questions that you could use in your classroom right away. What are they? How are you going to use them?
Step 3: Try It.
Try them out with your students and report back. How did it go? Was there anything surprising about the experience, or anything you would do differently? Share your reflections in the comments section of this post.
Things to consider as you try using these prompts with your students:
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What is your goal or purpose for using Student Opinion questions?
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Will you do it as a class or as an individual student assignment? In class or as homework?
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Will you assign a question that aligns with your content or allow students to choose?
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Where and how will students answer these questions? On the Learning Network site? In a notebook or on Google Classroom? Somewhere else?
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Is there any additional scaffolding you might need to provide to help your students be able to read, understand and write responses to these prompts?
If your students are 13 years or older, they can respond to our writing prompts directly on The Learning Network. They do not need a New York Times subscription to do this, but they will need to create a free account to post their own comments. If your students are under 13 and still want to participate in the conversation, you or a parent can post on their behalf.
As Ms. Shah’s students mentioned, our Student Opinion forums are an authentic space for students to connect to a diverse audience of peers from around the world. Each week we recognize some outstanding student comments in our Current Events Conversation column.
Go Beyond the Feature
In the examples above, teachers use Student Opinion questions as daily practice, warm-up activities for a lesson or new unit, test prep and the starting point for a class discussion. Some teachers have taken this feature even further:
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Robin Fogal-Shrive, a high school English teacher, was inspired by one of our Student Opinion prompts, “Why Do We Take Selfies?,” which was published in 2013. She used the ideas in this prompt, along with the related Times article, to engage students in an activity using cellphone selfies to build relationships at the start of the year and get students writing.
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Jacqueline Hesse and Christine McCartney, English teachers in New York, implemented a new approach to teaching research and argument writing that led to a marked improvement in their students’ abilities to examine multiple viewpoints and take thoughtful, nuanced positions.
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Beth Pandolpho, a language arts teacher, integrates our Student Opinion questions into her argumentative writing unit to help students discover and write about issues that matter to them. She then has her class analyze mentor texts before writing and submitting their own work to our annual Editorial Contest.
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Ben Klash, a high school English teacher, starts by using Student Opinion questions as a daily writing prompt. As the collection of prompts grows, students have the opportunity to create a project out of their responses. The questions and prompts from the Student Opinion and Film Club guide students to ask their own essential questions and help build Socratic-style discussions.
"Opinion" - Google News
August 12, 2021 at 01:31AM
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A Teacher’s Guide to Using Our Student Opinion Questions - The New York Times
"Opinion" - Google News
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